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You go to the range, throw lead around, have a good time, develop muscle memory ...
You come home, disassemble your weapons, clean them throughly ...
Reassemble them, rack the slide a few times, and then ...
You put one in the pipe and trust your life to a weapon that you cannot truly, fully verify ...

I have often considered the irony of this situation before my CHL when I was only securing the weapons for home defense. Now that I am carrying - the irony stands out even more.

The one point in time when you have the most confidence that your weapon is working properly is while at the range. Then, after a successful test, the first thing you do is come home and take it apart and put it back together - creating opportunity to introduce a failure to the system. Obviously, there is no way around this - the weapon must be cleaned. And if you do your job properly - there is very little risk of creating a failure. When I was still serving, I literally could disassemble are reassemble my M16 blindfolded.

But there are not many other critical systems I can think of where you don't perform a full operational test after performing preventative maintenance. You change the break pads on your vehicle and when you finish you take it for a test drive.

So anyway, after cleaning and reassembly, what 'tests' do you run through?

Do you just rack the slide several times?
Do you hand cycle a few rounds, or perhaps snapcaps, through? That assumes your weapon has an extractor.
Do you throw a fresh snap cap in and 'fire' looking for an indention on the cap?
Do you dry fire, assuming you have a weapon that is ok to do so with?

Just curious ...

I live in the country. After I disassemble and clean, I put in three rounds, go outside and fire them. then it goes in my holster for carry. Not everyone can do that but I am lucky.

Gary

You can very easily check for feeding & chambering by hand-cycling the side with some snap caps in the magazine.

If you want to make sure it will go "BANG", drop a wooden pencil (eraser end down) down the barrel of your UNLOADED pistol & point the pistol at the ceiling. When you pull the trigger, the firing pin should launch the pencil about 2 feet in the air.

Pawpaw1 wrote:You can very easily check for feeding & chambering by hand-cycling the side with some snap caps in the magazine.

Not in my Tomcat as it has no extractor - it uses the back blast to extract.

Pawpaw1 wrote: If you want to make sure it will go "BANG", drop a wooden pencil (eraser end down) down the barrel of your UNLOADED pistol & point the pistol at the ceiling. When you pull the trigger, the firing pin should launch the pencil about 2 feet in the air.

Now that's something I hadn't thought of at all. I guess if you forget and try it loaded, the pencil will go a little higher than two feet?

Pawpaw1 wrote:You can very easily check for feeding & chambering by hand-cycling the side with some snap caps in the magazine.

If you want to make sure it will go "BANG", drop a wooden pencil (eraser end down) down the barrel of your UNLOADED pistol & point the pistol at the ceiling. When you pull the trigger, the firing pin should launch the pencil about 2 feet in the air.

Thanks! Thats fun. I've been shootin pencils around the garage ever since I read this.

If you've used it and have properly maintained it, I think you just have to trust your weapon. If its a good quality weapon, cleaned, properly assembled, and you have good quality ammo, expect it to work.

If your still concerned, carrying two guns will double your chances of having a working gun when you need it

TexasTony wrote:If your still concerned, carrying two guns will double your chances of having a working gun when you need it

That made me laugh.

To OP: great topic! I've thought the same thing before. I'll use some of these tips from now on to get as close to 100% assurance as possible.

I too have had the same thoughts as terryg, but then one of my pistols is a Glock...it's literally idiot-proof (just wait, they'll build a better idiot thought! lol).

How about this - a cleaning area at the local range?

I do test my guns after cleaning though (except for live fire).

For anything other than routine cleaning, I will take my firearm for a live fire check at the range before I consider it suitable for carry.

I don't clean my guns everytime I go to the range. I clean them every 300-400 rounds or so, except my wife's Glock. That one I clean 2-3 times a year. When do I clean them? Just before I go to the range. When I am going to a match, I clean the gun, go to the range and run a few mags through it and I am good to go.


thanks,
George

terryg wrote:You go to the range, throw lead around, have a good time, develop muscle memory ...
You come home, disassemble your weapons, clean them throughly ...
Reassemble them, rack the slide a few times, and then ...
You put one in the pipe and trust your life to a weapon that you cannot truly, fully verify ...

I have often considered the irony of this situation before my CHL when I was only securing the weapons for home defense. Now that I am carrying - the irony stands out even more.

The one point in time when you have the most confidence that your weapon is working properly is while at the range. Then, after a successful test, the first thing you do is come home and take it apart and put it back together - creating opportunity to introduce a failure to the system. Obviously, there is no way around this - the weapon must be cleaned. And if you do your job properly - there is very little risk of creating a failure. When I was still serving, I literally could disassemble are reassemble my M16 blindfolded.

But there are not many other critical systems I can think of where you don't perform a full operational test after performing preventative maintenance. You change the break pads on your vehicle and when you finish you take it for a test drive.

So anyway, after cleaning and reassembly, what 'tests' do you run through?

Do you just rack the slide several times?
Do you hand cycle a few rounds, or perhaps snapcaps, through? That assumes your weapon has an extractor.
Do you throw a fresh snap cap in and 'fire' looking for an indention on the cap?
Do you dry fire, assuming you have a weapon that is ok to do so with?

Just curious ...

I clean after every range trip, reassemble, and dry fire (after making TRIPLE certain the gun is still unloaded) to make sure everything went together as it should.

Frequent cleaning gives me a chance to perform closely spaced inspections to detect any visible signs of problems before they become critical, and maintains weapon familiarity. Doing it often also decreases the chances that I might forget something as could happen if I only did it a couple of times a year.

In over 35 years of carrying, I haven't had any disappointing clicks when I expected bangs, so it works for me.

terryg wrote:You go to the range, throw lead around, have a good time, develop muscle memory ...
You come home, disassemble your weapons, clean them throughly ...
Reassemble them, rack the slide a few times, and then ...
You put one in the pipe and trust your life to a weapon that you cannot truly, fully verify ...

I have often considered the irony of this situation before my CHL when I was only securing the weapons for home defense. Now that I am carrying - the irony stands out even more.

The one point in time when you have the most confidence that your weapon is working properly is while at the range. Then, after a successful test, the first thing you do is come home and take it apart and put it back together - creating opportunity to introduce a failure to the system. Obviously, there is no way around this - the weapon must be cleaned. And if you do your job properly - there is very little risk of creating a failure. When I was still serving, I literally could disassemble are reassemble my M16 blindfolded.

But there are not many other critical systems I can think of where you don't perform a full operational test after performing preventative maintenance. You change the break pads on your vehicle and when you finish you take it for a test drive.

So anyway, after cleaning and reassembly, what 'tests' do you run through?

Do you just rack the slide several times?
Do you hand cycle a few rounds, or perhaps snapcaps, through? That assumes your weapon has an extractor.
Do you throw a fresh snap cap in and 'fire' looking for an indention on the cap?
Do you dry fire, assuming you have a weapon that is ok to do so with?

Just curious ...

The next time that I go to the range, they always go bang. So why wouldn't they if I need them before the next range trip?

Another Glock guy here and as it was said earlier, these things are pretty much idiot proof. I clean after every use, re-assemble, rack the slide and dry fire a few time, then load the mag and chamber a round. They are then ready to

Clean the firearm properly and perform a functionality test as often as you can. If you have any doubts about your ability to do either of these tasks for that particular firearm, I personally wouldn’t carry it; nor reach for in a situation. There are too many other factors involved while in a situation to worry about hardware failures.

So anyway, after cleaning and reassembly, what 'tests' do you run through?

Each firearm has a function check appropriate for each particular make and model.

If you are not familiar with the function check for your particular firearm, you can more than likely find it on-line.

A function check is all that is required to ensure your firearm is serviceable after cleaning. Performing a simple function check has worked for me and countless others in service with individual and crew served weapons, and it will work for citizens with their individual firearm of choice as well.